Recent years have seen a proliferation of computer-controlled video arcade games which provide persons seeking entertainment a wide variety of entertaining interactive games premised upon a video display and player interaction. Many of these games are outgrowths of and related to the pinball arcade games, principally electromechanical devices whose popularity has diminished with the rise in popularity of the video arcade games.
Many video and pinball arcade games, and home video games, have as a primary player objective the achievement of a high score. A player, after honing his skills at play, readily discovers that he is able to amaze friends with his reflexes and abilities with repeated play, leading to higher and higher scores as the reward for development of the skills.
Some arcade games provide other types of rewards, such as the provision of additional playing time or the presentation of entertaining interludes of video images and musical passages upon the occurrence of predetermined events. For example, the achievement of a predetermined score in the currently-popular PAC-MAN (trademark) game causes an amusing cartoon image of PAC-MAN characters chasing each other to be presented, accompanied by the recognizable PAC-MAN musical theme tune. Typically, these predetermined events occur at predetermined scoring levels, so that the player can be periodically entertained as he passes through various scoring levels on his way to achievement of his ultimate score in the game.
After a player has achieved a certain skill level, these rather mundane "rewards" may be viewed disdainfully and sometimes annoyingly, as the player tires of the conventional "cartoon and tune" interlude. Prior to the present invention, there has been a dearth of unique and novel rewards or incentives for a skilled player short of these musical tones and video images, or the provision of additional playing time. As the arcade industry has recently become more competitive in seeking to attract players (and their money), there has accordingly developed a need for new, unusual, and player-exciting features.
One attempt to provide player incentive in an arcade-type game is shown in U.S. Pat. No. 2,404,653 to Plebanek, which comprises a shooting gallery-type game. In this game, the player attempts to score points by shooting at a moving rabbit. In the event the player misses the rabbit after the rabbit has moved a predetermined distance, the rabbit pivots towards the player and "fires" back at the player, causing the generation of an unpleasant electrical current to pass through the body of the player, who is holding two electrodes mounted on the handles of the gun. This type device is hazardous not only to the player (since the electrical current passes through the heart) but may also be to observers standing in close proximity to the player, who might receive electrical shocks if they should come into contact with the player. This approach is hazardous and provides a negative incentive in the form of an unpleasant shocking experience to the player (since current passes through the body), rather than a positive incentive.